Puckers Up

by Mark Peter Hughes

  It rang once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  My heart was in my throat. At the end of the fourth ring my call was sent to voice mail. Somehow I hadn’t expected this. I should have just hung up. I should have given myself the time to think through what to say to a machine and then called back. But the outgoing voice prompt was surprisingly short, just the name of the agency and a quick request to leave a message. By the time it was over and I heard the beep, I was still holding the phone to my ear.

  My friends, the fact is I froze.

  “This is Stella … Stella Penn,” I blurted out. “Jennifer Sweet gave us her card. She said to call this number so … so, that’s what I’m doing.” I gave the callback number and quickly hung up.

  The moment I did it, I realized with a flash of panic that I’d left out something vital. I’d forgotten to mention I was from Lemonade Mouth! How were they supposed to know what I was calling about? How many pointless messages did they receive on that voice mail line every day, unknown musicians trying to sneak or charm their way into the fame machine that was the world-renowned Decker and Smythe Talent Agency? Plenty, I guessed. Did they even know who Stella Penn was? I doubted it.

  I dropped my head onto the desk and pressed my forehead to the cold metal. What an idiot! From a few feet away I heard somebody knocking on the glass partition. I looked up.

  “You okay, Stella?” Beverly. She was staring at me.

  “I’m fine,” I lied. “Just resting.”

  She nodded sympathetically and went back to her work.

  Sitting up straight, I tried to pull myself together. Calling back now would make it obvious that I’d screwed up, but there was no getting around it. I grabbed my phone again and hit the redial button. I hoped nobody would pick up this time. If someone did, I felt sure I’d be too embarrassed to talk. There was no need to worry, though. Voice mail, just like before.

  “Stella Penn again,” I said. “Uh, just in case you didn’t know—which you probably don’t—I’m part of Lemonade Mouth. Call back, okay?”

  I hung up once more and buried my face in my hands. Ugh. Call back, okay?

  Could I have said anything more pathetic?

  WEN

  Crossing My Enormous Rubber Fingers

  A lot of people say Lemonade Mouth made some mistakes around that time. I can’t deny it, but you have to remember what our lives were like in the early part of that summer. Sure, we were working on some new recordings, but we were also living our regular lives just like any other normal teenagers, and it wasn’t always easy.

  Take my life, for example.

  My dad had just gotten married to his much-younger girlfriend, Sydney, and suddenly his whole outlook was changing. Sydney had a new business selling antiques, and my dad got it into his head that it was time for him to start a new business too. Almost without warning he quit his job as an insurance claims adjuster—a position he’d had for twenty years—and started working on a new business idea: selling hot dogs to people on the street. No joke. In a junkyard he had found an oversized passenger van that somebody had converted into an ice cream truck, and he bought it for practically nothing. In one crazy weekend he painted it yellow, replaced the engine and fitted a gigantic plastic frankfurter onto the roof. His new business was called Wieners on Wheels.

  It was clear to me that my father’s midlife crisis was getting way out of hand.

  George, my ten-year-old brother, loved the idea of a wiener business, but I wanted nothing to do with it. Even Sydney was skeptical at first. As the three of us stood gaping at the jalopy he’d just unveiled for us, she started to pull at a lock of her shiny black hair like she was struggling with what to say.

  “Look, I’ve been in a rut in my old job,” my dad said, adjusting his glasses and smiling proudly at his creation, “and you guys all know I’ve always wanted to start my own business. Well, this is it! I did the math and I really think it can work. Everybody loves hot dogs in the summer, right? And it’s not like there’s much overhead to worry about—mostly just the cost of gas and the food. I’m planning to offer a choice of quality toppings.”

  Sydney was still staring. Apart from the bright new paint, the thing looked ancient, with actual patches of rust visible here and there. It was huge too, which was part of what made it so impressive. People would see this monster coming from miles away.

  “Yes, Norm,” she said at last, glancing sideways at him. “I know we agreed to this, but now that I actually see the van I can’t help but wonder … are you sure you’re not taking on more than you can handle?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, we’ll be fine. I’ve got this all worked out. You’re the artistic one, so you can help me figure out how to advertise. George can ride with me sometimes. I’ll hire somebody part-time to drive around when I can’t do it myself, and for everything else, well, Wendel isn’t doing much this summer. He can help out too.”

  That took a moment to sink in. What? Me?

  Before I could object, my dad reached across my shoulder and pulled me in close. He held Sydney’s hand. He looked so happy. “Think of this as a family project.”

  I could only blink at him.

  And that’s how I ended up with a summer job that included standing on busy street corners wearing a giant wiener suit and waving to passing traffic. Adding insult to injury, I wasn’t even going to get paid. It gave new meaning to the word humiliation.

  Worse still, my father had hired my nemesis, Scott Pickett, of all people, to be his part-time driver. I guess Scott was looking for work, and being two years older than me, he already had his license. I was livid. Scott had been a creep to me and my band during the school year. He and his friend Ray Beech and their arrogant crowd, the Mudslide Crushers, had tried to stop Lemonade Mouth from playing at our school’s Halloween Bash and had even tried to ruin our shows. Those kids acted like they owned the world. Worst of all was the way Scott had treated Mo. He’d dated her briefly and then dumped her like yesterday’s garbage, only to end up crawling back to her like the slime ball he was. By then Mo saw him for what he was and rejected him—thank goodness—but still, it seemed unfair to force me to be with Scott in the summertime too.

  My dad was unsympathetic. “Listen, Wen, Scott has a good driving record, he told me he can be flexible with his hours, and I need the help. Whatever you have against him, you’ll just have to get over it. Besides, he seems like a nice, polite kid to me. People do change, you know.”

  I almost laughed. I didn’t believe Scott Pickett had changed. Not for a second.

  So the morning after we met the Decker and Smythe lady, there I was in front of the Wampanoag Road shopping center dressed as an enormous frankfurter, doing my best to look cheerful as I held up a WIENERS ON WHEELS sign. I could see my reflection in the storefront window across the street. Most of me was hidden under stiff plastic, but unfortunately my face was visible—including my rectangular glasses and even a few wisps of my blond hair. Occasionally people I knew would pass by and I’d feel myself turn red when they honked and waved from their cars, sometimes howling with laughter.

  Miserable as I felt, it was only natural that a part of me hoped my life was about to change for the better. Stella had left her message for the Decker and Smythe people a while ago, so now I kept checking my messages to see if she’d heard back. I looked again. Nothing. I wondered what was taking them so long.

  “Hello, tall and handsome. Nice bun.”

  I had to spin my entire costumed body around just to see who it was. Olivia. She’d come to visit me. Her pale brown hair was pulled back from her face, and it hung behind her in a ponytail. Her hand was covering her smile, barely concealing the laughter as she took in my ridiculous outfit.

  “So you like the look, huh?” I said. “It’s not often you see huge white rubber gloves like these babies anymore. Very retro-chic.”

  “Yes, but it’s the accessories that are doing it for me.” She nodded toward the red and yellow globs that
were supposed to look like ketchup and mustard. “I like a man with good condiments.”

  Ha ha. Oh, the comedy potential was endless.

  If the situation wasn’t so real I might have enjoyed it for the jokes alone.

  Thing was, I had a hard time complaining about my dad or Sydney when I was around Olivia, who had much more serious family issues than I did. Her mother abandoned her and disappeared when Olivia was barely a toddler, and her dad was in prison for accidentally killing someone during a robbery when Olivia was still a little kid, leaving Olivia to be raised by her grandmother. So no matter how bad things sometimes seemed for me, having Olivia around kept it all in perspective.

  But not everything was clear when it came to Olivia.

  “So, are you and her, like, a couple now, or what?” Charlie had recently asked me over pizza. And the funny thing was, I didn’t know the answer. I knew that I really, really liked being with her, but even though she and I spent a lot of time together, we’d never really labeled our thing—whatever it was—that way. Not being sure exactly where we stood was frustrating sometimes, but what could I do? With Olivia there was always a chance that if I pressed her on this subject it might make her back off. I was just taking things a day at a time.

  Now, as we stood on the sidewalk together at the corner of Wampanoag and Rumstick Roads, she grinned at me. The good news was that she’d brought her accordion, like we’d planned, and my trumpet case was waiting at my feet. Olivia and I had talked about this. Just because I had to spend my mornings dressed as a processed meat product didn’t mean we couldn’t also use the time to write a new song or two.

  I yanked off the gloves and soon the two of us had made up a new riff, a bouncy accordion progression that sounded fantastic under a series of descending trumpet notes. We played it over and over again, with Olivia humming all kinds of different melodies over the music. There were no words yet, but we could already tell the song was going to be great. A few passing pedestrians stopped to listen, and even a couple of cars slowed down. We must have looked ridiculous, but we were having such a good time, what did it matter?

  After a while Olivia asked me to check and see if we’d heard from Stella. It was no secret that Olivia had mixed feelings about the whole Decker and Smythe thing. She’d never wanted to be famous. But even though the spotlight had always made her uncomfortable, she also knew that more exposure for the band meant a lot to the rest of us.

  Just looking at her face, I could see she was trying her best to be enthusiastic.

  There were no new messages on my phone so I sent a text to Stella: ANYTHNG? The response came a few seconds later. NOT YT. KEEP YR FINGRS CRSSD. When Olivia read it she raised an eyebrow. I knew what she was thinking. She and I both looked down at the bulky, three-fingered rubber gloves I’d tossed on the pavement.

  If I had to keep those things on, following Stella’s advice wouldn’t be an easy task.

  MOHINI

  Navigating a Minefield

  “Monu, will you come back here, please? Your mother and I have some news we want to share with you.”

  My dad is standing in the doorway of the storage room at the back of our family’s store, Banerjee Grocery. I hear the voice but my mind is elsewhere. I’m unloading a case of Nirav ghee jars onto the shelves and I’m thinking about Stella and the return call she’s expecting from the talent agency. It’s early afternoon and we still haven’t heard anything.

  “I’ll be there in just a moment, Baba. Just as soon as I finish with this box.”

  There’s a tap on the front window. I look up just in time to catch a flash of cat’s-eye glasses and poofy brown hair before the bell on the door jingles. It’s Naomi Fishmeier, my best friend since forever, and she looks like she’s in a hurry. “I’m not staying,” she says, breathless. “Just checking in. Any news from Stella?”

  I shake my head, and my eyes linger on her outfit. Naomi’s wearing one of her best concert tees, the pink one she got during the recent Zombie Blasters tour, and matching pink low-tops with her new black jean miniskirt. Not over-the-top, but very cute. Knowing her as I do, I’m sure she must have spent some time on this.

  “Looking good, Naomi. Any particular reason?”

  “Shut up,” she says, but she smiles and blushes just a little, and that says it all.

  She and I both know what’s going on here. She’s on her way to Lyle Dwarkin’s house to help set up for our usual afternoon recording session. She hasn’t officially admitted it yet, but it’s obvious she’s starting to have a thing for Lyle.

  She starts back through the doorway again. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Banerjee!” she calls to my parents, who by then have both retreated into the storage room. “Well, call when you hear, okay?” she says to me. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

  I promise I will, and then she’s gone.

  It takes me another minute to finish stacking the ghee jars and put the boxes away. I’m listening to the soft Indian music my dad is playing through the stereo, when I remember that my parents are waiting for me. I wipe my hands on a cloth and head to the storage room. My mother is at her desk going through a pile of receipts with a calculator. My father is next to her, reading a letter.

  “You said you have news?”

  “We do,” he says. “Do you remember ever hearing Maa and me talk about the Kumars? Hemant and Bhavini?”

  “Vaguely. They were neighbors of ours back in India, right?”

  “Neighbors and very good friends. Both were students at Calcutta University back then, and you used to play in the sand with their son, Rajeev, before you could even walk. You don’t remember?”

  I shrug. My family left India when I was two. Of course I don’t remember.

  “The Kumars are moving to Lubbock, Texas,” my dad continues. “They both got teaching jobs at Texas Tech, so they’ll be bringing their family out there later this summer. In the meantime, they’ve asked if Rajeev can stay with us for a few weeks before he joins his parents in Lubbock this August.”

  A few quiet seconds pass.

  “And? What did you tell them?”

  “We said yes, of course.”

  The moment feels weird. Okay, so we’re going to have a visitor this summer. Fine. Why are Baba and Maa watching me like they’re expecting me to start squawking like a chicken or something? There’s something else going on here, something they’re not saying. I’m not positive what it is, but looking at their expectant faces I have a sudden, sneaking suspicion—and it’s not good.

  Maa leans forward and her next words leave me with little doubt. “Monu,” she says, “Rajeev is a lovely boy from a good family. He’s sixteen now. We’re told his grades are excellent.”

  For a second I just stand there. I’ve always known that my parents’ marriage was prearranged. As conservative Hindus, their parents worked it all out for them when my mother and father were still in their early teens—years before the actual wedding took place. I respect that, of course, and I love my parents, but unlike them, I grew up here in the United States, where things are different—a fact that has been becoming more and more of a problem between us lately. Sure, I’ve always realized that I might have to navigate this minefield at some point or another, but I never dreamed it would be so soon.

  After all, I only just turned fifteen.

  “That’s nice,” I say, keeping my voice steady and my expression blank. “Too bad I won’t be around much this summer, what with Lemonade Mouth and my volunteering job at the medical clinic and everything. Plus, Charlie and I have plans.”

  There. That ought to send the message.

  They glance at each other. “Oh, I’m sure you can work around those things,” Baba says with just a hint of a nervous smile. “You’re close to his age, so when he comes it will be nice for you to show him around. Introduce him to your friends. I’m sure he’ll enjoy meeting them.”

  “That’s right,” Maa says. “You can help him transition into his new country. Make him feel comfortable.” />
  “When is he coming?”

  “Next Friday. The start of the Fourth of July weekend.”

  “Next week?” I want to point out that they must have known about this for a while. I’m tempted to tell them how obvious it is that they put off mentioning it to me only because they knew what my reaction would be. It’s no secret that despite everything, they’re still uncomfortable that I’m going out with Charlie. I want to tell them that no matter what their plans are, they’re just going to have to accept the fact that I’ll never match their idea of the perfect Bengali daughter.

  But I don’t say any of these things. It would be like admitting that I know what’s going on, and if I don’t say it and they don’t say it, then I can pretend it isn’t happening.

  “Keep an open mind. You might find that you like him.”

  “Yes, Baba,” I say. My voice is calm, but inside I’m burning. I spin on my heels and head back to the front counter. I can feel my face reddening. It’s not fair to have to share my world with a complete stranger against my will. It’s not fair that a boy I don’t even remember meeting can appear out of nowhere and shake up my life. I wonder how long this has been in the works, whether this arrangement was something my parents and the Kumars talked about years ago, back when this Rajeev and I were still playing in the sand together.

  … a lovely boy from a good family … his grades are excellent …

  One thing I know: I’m not going to like him. He hasn’t even arrived yet, but I’m already certain of it. My whole summer was just shot to pieces in a single moment. It’s going to be a complete disaster—I can already tell.

  The phone rings, but I’m too shaken to pick it up, so it transfers to the back room. A few seconds later Baba steps out.

  “That was for you,” he says. “It was Stella. She said to tell you she finally heard from someone named Earl Decker. She says you and your friends have an appointment tomorrow in Boston.”